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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2016
Domed rotundas have fascinated and challenged architects and engineers for the last two millennia. Examples can be found throughout the world, most commonly in religious and commemorative buildings, but also in the palaces and bath complexes of ancient Rome and in more recent government and legislative buildings. In modern times technological advances have allowed new and increasingly ambitious kinds of rotunda to be built — markets and exchanges, greenhouses and conservatories, concert and exhibition halls, sports arenas. The roots of this latter development lie in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and one of the pioneering buildings still survives in the unexpected setting of the Royal Pavilion gardens at Brighton.
The Brighton Pavilion has always been mainly associated with two people: George, Prince of Wales (the Prince Regent), who commissioned it, and John Nash, the architect who gave it its present exotic appearance. But it is easy to forget that the most distinctive features of the Nash exterior — the Indian-style domes and minarets — took their stylistic character from a building that was completed before he became involved with the Pavilion. This was the royal stables, designed by William Porden for the Prince, built in 1804–08, and now an arts complex.
1 For ancient and more recent examples, see MacDonald, William L., The Pantheon(London, 1976), p. 33 and passim.Google Scholar
2 For the history of the Pavilion, see Roberts, Henry, A History of the Royal Pavilion. Brighton (London, 1939);Google Scholar Musgrave, Clifford, Royal Pavilion (London, 1959);Google Scholar Dinkel, John, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton (London, 1983);Google Scholar Morley, John, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (London, 1984)Google Scholar. Holland’s design for remodelling the exterior along Chinese lines was not executed: see Morley, , Royal Pavilion, p. 37.Google Scholar
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4 Porden’s design was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1805. The house still exists, but was rebuilt in 1927.
5 Musgrave, , Royal Pavilion, pp. 36–38.Google Scholar
6 Worsley, Giles, The British Stable (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 160–67,182–85Google Scholar. There was already a riding house at Carlton House.
7 He was one of the main purchasers of the Prince’s stud at Newmarket when it was sold following a scandal in 1791: Hibbert, Christopher, George IV, Prince of Wales (London, 1972), p. 110 Google Scholar. Holland’s assistant P. F. Robinson had been apprenticed to Porden in 1790: Colvin, Howard M., Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (New Haven and London, 2008), p. 879.Google Scholar
8 Colvin, , Dictionary, pp. 822–23Google Scholar; Tyack, Geoffrey, ‘Porden, William (bap. 1755, d. 1822)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22548 (accessed 8 April 2015), hereafter ODNB Google Scholar. The Pantheon burned down in 1792.
9 Graves, Algernon, Royal Academy Exhibitors VI (London, 1904), p. 183.Google Scholar
10 The original house was built to the designs of William Samwell in 1675. Other houses by Porden include Swainston House on the Isle of Wight (1798) and Shottesbrooke Park, Berkshire (1807), reduced in size in 1960.
11 Quoted in Lindfield, Peter, ‘Porden’s Eaton’, Georgian Group Journal, 21 (2013), pp. 151–65 (p. 153)Google Scholar. See also Guy Acloque, and Cornforth, John, “The Eternal Gothic of Eaton”, Country Life, 11 and 18 February 1971, pp. 304–07,360–64.Google Scholar
12 In 1806 Porden was employed by the 2nd Earl to carry out alterations at his newly-acquired Grosvenor House in Park Lane, but he was later supplanted at Eaton by the clerk of works, Benjamin Gummow, and at Grosvenor House by Thomas Cundy (ODNB).
13 It was finally built in the 1830s as stables for Queen Adelaide, consort to William IV. The site is now occupied by the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.
14 Worsley, , British Stable, p. 220 Google Scholar. The open courtyard, 156 ft in diameter, was roofed over in 1881 with an iron- ribbed glass dome designed by R. R. Duke, at the time the largest-span iron-and-glass dome in the world.
15 Ledoux had made an unexecuted design for an opera house with a Pantheon-like dome of brick in about 1781: Deming, Mark K., La Halle au Blé de Paris, 1762–1813 (Brussels, 1984), p. 84.Google Scholar
16 The Farington Diary VI, ed. Garlick, Kenneth and Macintyre, Angus (New Haven and London, 1979), VI, p. 2382 (20 July 1804).Google Scholar
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18 l’Orme, Philibert de, Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bastir et a petitz frais (Paris, 1561 Google Scholar; reprinted together with the Traités d’Architecture, Paris, 1988); Deming, , Halle au Blé, p. 182.Google Scholar
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21 Wiebenson, , ‘Domes’, p. 266 and n.38Google Scholar. The diameter of the Pantheon is 150 Roman feet, or 44.4 metres: Claridge, Amanda, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2010), p. 230.Google Scholar
22 Young, Arthur, Travels in France and Italy (1792: ed., London, 1915), p. 77 Google Scholar
23 Deming, , Halle au Blé, p. 181 Google Scholar and n. 61, quoting a letter to Maria Cosway, 12 October 1786.
24 Beiswanger, , ‘Jefferson and the Art of Roofing’, The Chronicle, 58.1 (2005), pp. 18–25 Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Jon Clarke.
25 Braham, , Architecture of the French Enlightenment, p. 228 Google Scholar; Saint, , Architect and Engineer, pp. 81–84.Google Scholar
26 Porden is known to have visited Paris in 1816 and 1818, but his meagre diaries for the early nineteenth century contain no references to earlier visits: see Matlock, Derbyshire County Record Office, D3311/11/4/ 4-5/7-8, ‘William Porden: Diaries and Journals’.
27 For example, Krafft, Johann Carl and Ransonnette, Nicolas, Plans, coupes et élévations des plus belles maisons et hôtels construits à Paris et dans les environs (Paris, 1801), pl. 109 Google Scholar; Krafft, Johann Carl, Traité sur l’art de la charpente (Paris, 1805)Google Scholar. See Deming, , Halle au Blé, pp. 16 and 178.Google Scholar
28 Royal Archives, Windsor (hereafter RA), 33553–4, 33576, 33578–9, 33580–1; Roberts, , Royal Pavilion, pp. 56–61.Google Scholar
29 Diestelkamp, Edward, ‘Building Technology and Architecture’, in Late Georgian Classicism, ed. White, Roger and Lightburn, Caroline (London, 1987), pp. 73–91 (p. 77)Google Scholar; Sutherland, James, ‘19th-century Iron and Glass Domes’, in Domes 2000, ed. Gomme, Andor (Dorking, 2000), pp. 111–30.Google Scholar
30 Brayley, Edward Wedlake, Illustrations of His Majesty’s Palace at Brighton (London, 1838), p. 31 Google Scholar. It was reproduced with the permission of Porden’s son-in-law Joseph Kay, who owned the original designs at the time.
31 Colvin, , Dictionary, pp. 903–04Google Scholar. I am indebted to Sue Berry and Helen Glass for pointing out the relationship between the two Saunders brothers. Edward Saunders had already worked under Holland at Carlton House, and at the Brighton Pavilion in 1801–04; see Roberts, , Royal Pavilion, pp. 44–46.Google Scholar
32 Brayley, , Illustrations of His Majesty’s Palace, p. 16.Google Scholar
33 Ibid.
34 The famous illustration to Jeremy Bentham’s description of a Panopticon prison was published c. 1791.
35 The Times, 7 August 1805.
36 RA, 33580–1 (29 June 1805); 33591-2 (23 October 1806); Sussex Weekly Advertiser, 25 August 1806. Saunders was described as ‘late of Oxford Street and Brighton, builder’: Morning Post, 28 December 1805. I am grateful to Sue Berry for this reference.
37 RA, 33591–2, 33593–4.
38 RA, 33662–5 (11 July 1809).
39 The Duke of Newcastle’s famous riding school at Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire, of c. 1630, is 92 ft by 30 ft. For eighteenth- and nineteenth-century riding houses, see Worsley, Giles, ‘A History and Catalogue of the British Riding House’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 47 (2003), pp. 47–92 Google Scholar. The Brighton Pavilion riding house is mentioned briefly on pp. 77–78.
40 Campa, , loc. cit., pp. 536–37.Google Scholar
41 See Conner, Patrick, Oriental Architecture in the West (London, 1979) pp. 113–30Google Scholar; Tyack, Geoffrey, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, Country Life, 15 February 2012, pp. 50–53 Google Scholar. See also Mildred Archer, , Indian Architecture and the British (Feltham, 1968), passim.Google Scholar
42 Sweetman, John, The Oriental Obsession (Cambridge, 1988), p. 86.Google Scholar
43 It was reprinted in 1793 as part of Hodges’s Travels in India during the years 1780, 1781, 1782 & 1793 (London), pp. 63–76.Google Scholar
44 SirReynolds, Joshua, Discourses on Art (ed. Wark, R. R., New Haven and London, 1975), p. 242 Google Scholar. The quotation comes from the thirteenth Discourse.
45 Hodges, William, Select Views in India (London, 1786), pls. 13, 31Google Scholar. Hodges and Dance were friends and neighbours: Stroud, Dorothy, George Dance, Architect, 1741–1825(London, 1971), p. 119.Google Scholar
46 The views were brought together and published in black and white in London in 1812–13. For modern commentaries on the plates, see Michell, George, Oriental Scenery: Two Hundred Years of India’s Artistic and Architectural Heritage (New Delhi, 1998).Google Scholar
47 Graves, , Royal Academy Exhibitors VI,p. 183. The design has been lost.Google Scholar
48 Musgrave, Royal Pavilion, p. 52.
49 RA, 34218–9, quoted in Musgrave, Royal Pavilion, p. 64.
50 Ginger, Andrew, ‘Daylesford House and Warren Hastings’, Georgian Group Report and Journal (1989), pp. 80–101 Google Scholar. The drawing room chimneypiece, flanked by sari-clad figures, depicts an Indian sacrificial scene.
51 Redgrave, Samuel, Dictionary of Artists of the English School (London, 1878), p. 338.Google Scholar
52 Hussey, Christopher, English Country Houses: Late Georgian (London, 1958), pp. 66–73 Google Scholar; Kingsley, Nicholas, The Country Houses of Gloucestershire, II (Chichester, 1992), pp. 225–28.Google Scholar
53 Thomas Daniell designed the stable block at Sezincote and advised on the layout of the garden, for which he designed an Indian-style bridge and temple.
54 Blair, Sheila and Bloom, Jonathan, Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800 (New Haven and London, 1994), pp. 149–54Google Scholar; Asher, Catherine, The Architecture of Mughal India (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 147, 149, 153 and passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55 See also his unexecuted design of 1805 for Downing College, Cambridge: Sicca, Cinzia M., Committed to Classicism: the Building of Downing College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 38–40, 41–45, 141–44.Google Scholar
56 RA, 34114/5, Henry Seward , ‘Report on the Stable Building at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton’. I owe this reference to David Beevers.
57 Hodges, , Select Views in India, pl. 31 Google Scholar: ‘It has great singularity, and I believe will hardly be considered by men of taste in any other light’.
58 Jones, Dalu, “The Elements of Decoration: Surface, Pattern and Light”, in Architecture of the Islamic World, ed. Michell, George (London, 1978), pp. 144–75 (pp. 163–64).Google Scholar
59 Michell, , Oriental Scenery, numbered: I, pl. 23 Google Scholar; II, pls. 13, 15, 17.
60 Ibid., I, p. 22. The monument stands next to the slightly plainer mausoleum of Jahangir’s murdered son Khusrau (1622).
61 Musgrave, , Royal Pavilion, p. 46.Google Scholar
62 Loudon, John Claudius, The landscape gardening and landscape architecture of the late Humphry Repton (London and Edinburgh, 1840), p. 368 Google Scholar. Repton’s designs were incorporated into one of his celebrated Red Books, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, and were published in in 1808 and again by John Claudius Loudon in 1840; see Daniels, Stephen, Humphry Repton (New Haven and Lonson, 1999), pp. 191–205.Google Scholar
63 Michell, , Oriental Scenery, numbered: II, pls. 13, 15, 17.Google Scholar
64 Brighton. Royal Pavilion Archives, 11338-9, 101343; reproduced in Morley, , Royal Pavilion, pp. 43 and 46.Google Scholar
65 Humphry Repton’s Memoirs, ed. Gore, Ann and Carter, George (Norwich, 2005), pp. 150–52.Google Scholar
66 ODNB. He was described in the most recent history of the estate as ‘incurably dilatory’: Survey of London, 39 (1977), P.44.Google Scholar
67 Booth, Lionel Geoffrey, ‘Laminated timber arch railway bridges in England and Scotland’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 44 (1971–72), pp. 1–22;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Idem, “The development of laminated timber arch structures in Bavaria, France and England in the early nineteenth century”, Journal of the Institute of Wood Science, 5.5 (July 1971), pp. 3–16 Google Scholar. For the Kings Cross train shed, see The Builder, 2 October 1852.
68 Cherry, Bridget, O’Brien, Charles and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England, London 5: East (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 697.Google Scholar
69 Booth, Lionel Geoffrey, ‘Henry Fuller’s Glued Laminated Timber Roof for Rusholme Road Congregational Sunday School and Other Early Timber Roofs’, Construction History, 10 (1994), pp. 29–45 Google Scholar.I owe this reference to Robert Thome.
70 Hunter, Michael and Thorne, Robert, Change at Kings Cross (London, 1990), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar
71 Other notable recent buildings with laminated timber roofs include the Richmond Olympic Oval at Vancouver (Cannon Design, 2008) and the Las Arenas shopping centre in Barcelona (Rogers Stirk Harbour, 2011).
72 I owe this reference to David Beevers. Iron was not necessarily more fire-resistant than thick timber, especially when the timber was coated, or treated with chemicals.
73 Porden’s buildings were repaired at a cost of £7,114 in 1823: Crook, J. Mordaunt and Port, Michael Henry, The History of the King’s Works, VI (London, 1973), pp. 259–60Google Scholar. Good’s drawings are preserved in the Royal Pavilion archives.
74 Antram, Nicholas and Morrice, Richard, Brighton and Hove (New Haven and London, 2008), pp. 44–47.Google Scholar
